Last November, less than two hours after a cyclist died at Bow Roundabout, Green London Assembly member Jenny Jones tweeted: “I think it’s now fair to say the Mayor of London has blood on his hands.”

It set the tone for a fortnight when I got a small idea of what it must have been like for the royals after Princess Diana’s car crash. Few others went as far as implying that Boris actually wanted cyclists dead but plenty joined Jones in jumping to conclusions far ahead of the evidence.

Any attempt to plead that not all accidents were the Mayor’s fault — that some, indeed, just might be due to the cyclist — brought angry denunciations of “victim-blaming.” Any attempt to say that cycling is actually quite safe, and getting safer, was swept aside in claims that Bow, in the words of one columnist, “seems more dangerous than Kabul”.

I don’t really blame people. We had six cyclist deaths in one November fortnight — more than in the six months since. But that exceptional, unprecedented two weeks should not drown out what we now know — that 2013 was the second safest year in history to be a London cyclist.

The standard measurement of safety is deaths and serious injuries, so-called KSIs, per journey cycled. In 2012, there were 14 deaths and 657 serious injuries in 211 million cycle journeys — one KSI in every 314,000 journeys. In 2013, the number of journeys and the number of deaths was the same, but the number of serious injuries fell by 28 per cent, to 475. One journey in every 433,000 ended in death or serious injury — the lowest figure ever, apart from 2006.

Compare that with the horrific recent past. In 1989, a year with only around 90 million cycle journeys, there were no fewer than 33 deaths, and 752 serious injuries.

Casualties are still too high. But if we are to cut them further, we need to be honest with ourselves about why they happen, and why they’ve already come down so much — even without many segregated cycle lanes.

The presence of mass cycling on London’s roads has changed drivers’ behaviour. London drivers now are more aware of cyclists and more considerate to them. You notice that immediately when you go out of town.

We at City Hall need to build safer roads, including segregated lanes — and we’re doing that. The first is already in place; the second will be unveiled in about six weeks, and most of the others in the autumn. But, as coroners’ verdicts on some tragedies have shown, cyclists also have a responsibility to use the roads safely.

After the November deaths, we put police at most main junctions in inner London, ticketing bad drivers and cyclists. Cyclists weren’t picked on — almost three-quarters of tickets went to motorists. But Operation Safeway had an incredible effect on driver and cyclist behaviour, on safety, and on the 2013 figures.

In December, serious injuries in inner London fell by 60 per cent over the same month the year before. In outer London, where Safeway didn’t happen, there was no reduction at all.

That’s why we’re repeating Safeway, on a smaller scale, every month for the foreseeable future. Working to change all road users’ behaviour is not, as some cyclists seem to think, a distraction from the “real job” of building segregated routes and junctions. The truth is that we need to do both, and we will do both.